Remember March '20, when a single infected singer at a Skagit Valley Chorale rehearsal had infected most of the choir, with two dead? Normal folks' reaction was "this is bad", but I guess Bernie Moreno lit a cigar and said "imma destroy any government nerd who reacts to this in any way"

Federal "X breakthrough" grantmaking is always $250k over 4y: I can train a new X workforce $225k over 2y: I hope someone trained an X I can hire $200k over 1y: our aging X expert has to write grants all day $175k for 6mo: the "big consulting group zero-expert intern-written report" sweet spot🧪

(unpacking into my new office) I remember picking this up for $0.50 at an MIT Library book sale. check out the inscription 🧪

This spring I'm reviving Physics 306: Nuclear Physics and Technology. Everything from shell models to reactor neutronics. Last time (2021) we talked about AP1000s, ESBWRs, and doomed SMR startups. Times have changed! Would love advice about how to teach the latest fusion and SMR R&D. #nukesky ⚛️🎢

(getting unpacked into my new office) Once at SNOLab I picked up a piece of rock underground for a souvenir. (Or two?) And I think Harry Nelson brought me a rock from SURF once. Did I label them? Stupidly, no. @steve.mastodon.cooleysekula.net.ap.brid.gy could that be Sudbury norite lower left?

I switched offices. I scooted a lil' particleboard desk in, movers hauled a literal ton of Steelcase desks out. Are desks a material-culture sign of how long people expected enterprises to last? Steelcase was "It's 18-gauge so your nth successor in the same office can use it 70 years from now"

AQI map looks like a diseased brown dragon poised to swallow Cleveland

Reboot _Hunt for Red October_ so Vasily Borodin survives & give him a post-defection TV series. He farms rabbits in MT and AZ, tours the country in his RV solving problems with homespun Red Fleet wisdom. His CIA handlers scramble to prevent his arrest for bigamy. Dir. Natasha Lyonne. (RIP Sam Neill)

POLICEMAN: "Did you see what kind of car hit you?" INJURED PEDESTRIAN: "I saw no car. I was hit by an uncanny black void. A two-dimensional absence of light that grew, swallowed me, and un-disappeared." POLICEMAN: <into radio> "yeah I got a 10-57, hit-and-run, round up Anish Kapoor"

Robust ultra-black automotive coating with structural absorption and high absorption efficiency based on waterborne carbon black/CNT composite

This work presents an easily processable strategy for the construction of ultra-black coatings with qualified automotive coating properties based on the ultra-fine and well-stabilized carbon black-car...

cell.com

This federally-required training on Research Security is full of depressingly outdated facts like "a robust federal research program is vital to American economic and national security" and "researchers are accountable to taxpayers and Congress" 🧪

I want the "Save Shaker Lake" discourse (which I sympathize with parts of) to be aware that 17" is a storm that ODNR expects will destroy Class II dams, but requires Class I dams to pass safely. These events are real and ODNR's threshholds are not crazy overkill here in the anthropocene.

Jeff Berardelli @weatherprof.bsky.social · last mo.

‼️ DOUBLED 1000-YR THRESHOLD There was a remarkable record shattered today near Sandusky, Ohio. 17” of rain in one day! The old state record is 10.75” The 1-in-1000 year threshold is only 8.41” in this spot. So this wasn’t just a 1-in-1000 year type event. It was basically impossible, until now!

In Mieville's Perdido Street Station, a cast of prickly outcasts team up for fantasy-trope-standard Underdogs Discover Teamwork & Loyalty. At the very end, the sad, sympathetic Yagharek confesses his past includes a rape conviction ... and the team dumps him instantly! No regrets! It was great.

Good idea. Our national 256th comes up in 2032! America’s 100000000th birthday. Around here, we light candles on the birthday cake in binary. So that would be one lit candle, followed by eight dark candles. Happy ninth candle, America! 🇺🇸🎂

I propose MLB amend the rulebook to treat this case differently: if a fan catches a live ball after a throw from a fielder, it's still live. Put down your nachos and try to make the relay throw. Be a legend.

Tim Stebbins@timstebbins.bsky.social · last mo.

Cooper Ingle lost track of the number of outs after catching a flyball. Run scored after he tossed it into the stands down the left-field line.

"Martin Puryear: Nexus" at the CMA is not to be missed, #cleveland folks. Open through 8/9. a) imagine dressing up as "Self" (1978) for Halloween b) the hardcover monograph is a steal in the gift shop at $65 c) see your old CMA buddy "Alien Huddle" (1993-95) again but with all its friends

Martin Puryear: Nexus | Cleveland Museum of Art

Martin Puryear’s (American, born 1941) singular work across mediums illuminates the expressive potential for abstraction in our time. Martin Puryear: Nexus highlights the global histories that have in...

clevelandart.org

Out today in Nature Microbiology: a paper that started in 2021 with an email from @sullivan-lab.bsky.social. Subject line: "Crazy ideas". www.nature.com/articles/s41... 1/23

So long #LHC and thank you for all the collisions 👋 Today, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, comes to the end of an extraordinary chapter in its scientific journey. Find out more: home.cern/cern-bids-fa...

A.E. HOUSMAN: Now, of my threescore years and 10, 20 will not come again, And take from 70 springs a score, It only leaves me 50 more. And since to look at things in bloom 50 springs are little room ... FOSSIL FUELS: update your math! we traded some "springs" for "heat domes". stay hydrated!

The NHTSA standard for driver height and sightlines should be set at "Oshkosh NGDV or better".

michael h keller@mhkeller.bsky.social · last mo.

Our latest investigation: How giant trucks and SUVs are far deadlier for pedestrians. “Before the driver knows what’s happened, the pedestrian’s head is under the wheel.” www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

lebensprawn

rev. howard arson@theophite.bsky.social · 2mo ago

the plot to invade Greenland was substantially to bring back all you can eat shrimp at Red Lobster

I took a day off work yesterday and spent 10 hours in the garden, getting 72 bare root trees planted and staked. The eventual goal: a three-season pollinator resource in the form of a South-of-England-inspired laid hedgerow! Using 100% Ohio native plants! Wish me luck!

incomprehensible pitcherspeak "I get a little bit too juiced up, so my miss is way worse with the four-seam on the outer half," Williams said. "With the seam-shift that I have on the sinker, I'm able to run it back -- where with the four-seam, I just pull it. It's an auto take every time."

The unique way this righty uses his sinker -- and why it works for him

Before Gavin Williams could walk through his various pitch grips, he needed to find a baseball. "I can show you better than I can tell you," the Guardians right-hander said before a day game at Yankee...

mlb.com

(catching up on #guardsball) Patrick Bailey's line drive went straight behind Luis Curvelo and pegged him in the knee. Curvelo limped to the ball, threw to 1st off-target for the putout, and left the game injured. The official scorer ... charged Curvelo with his career-first fielding error! No.

I'm reading a trashy Icelandic crime novel. It features many flashbacks to characters' childhoods, including this spectacular scene where Tinna solves a math problem correctly:

Planning to be in Europe in July but in a bit of a pickle with Visa issues. I booked my return on 30 July, but my visit to CERN ends on the 17th. I need an official invitation for the interim. If anyone in Schengen lands would beinterested to host me at their uni bw July 20-29, send me a DM. ⚛️

(missed this when it first came out. v. impressive work) Q: "what beamline and detector technologies did you use to do this measurement?" A: "yes" "β-delayed proton pandemonium: A first detailed 31Cl(βpγ) 30P decay scheme" by Tamas Budner et. al. ⚛️ arxiv.org/pdf/2510.04456

People talk about how fast we're losing WWII veterans, but we're also losing the all-star cast of The Longest Day (1962). Surviving (per Wikipedia) actors played: 5 American privates (0 officers left) 1 British Chief Wren 1 French "Second-Maître" (a naval petty officer) 0 Germans

Trump has always been a mashup of all the awful salesman characters in Glengarry Glen Ross. Now he's also all of the awful customers: weakling Lingk who is fast-talked into a sale; and the broke, demented, useless Nyborgs, for whom pretending-to-enter-contracts is a weird form of attention seeking.

Most #waroncars "spend less on car infrastructure" talk focuses on highways. What about spending less repaving side streets? What if low-traffic residential streets were kept paved only in a 10' driving lane, with the side space (parking, aprons, occasional slow passing) downgraded to gravel? 1/

You know what's a real reading adventure in America in the year 2026? Imelda Marcos' Wikipedia bio.